Apple Inc. AAPL-Q and chipmaker Nvidia Corp. NVDA-Q are in talks to invest in OpenAI as part of a new deal that would value the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup at US$100-billion, according to three people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The deal would be led by Thrive Capital and might also include Microsoft Corp. Thrive would put about US$1-billion into OpenAI, the people said.
A US$100-billion valuation would be about a US$20-billion increase from OpenAI’s valuation eight months ago.
Nvidia and Apple declined to comment.
OpenAI started the AI boom with the release of online chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022. In the months that followed, investors pumped tens of billions of dollars into the startup and other companies that were developing similar technologies.
In recent months, investors’ interest has cooled as several prominent startups essentially disappeared into tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft. But OpenAI has remained an independent operation intent on building and selling its own technologies and products.
Since 2019, Microsoft and others have invested more than US$13-billion in the startup, which needs billions of dollars in raw computing power to build its AI technologies. Nvidia, which supplies much of that computing power in the form of specialized computer chips suited to the development of AI, has experienced dramatic growth over the past 18 months. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported that its sales and profit had more than doubled during the three months that ended in July.
Early this year, Thrive led a deal that valued OpenAI at more than US$80-billion. With that deal, the startup did not issue new shares. The company allowed its employees to sell their existing shares.
The new deal would allow other existing shareholders to sell their shares as well.
Nvidia’s involvement in the talks was reported earlier by Bloomberg. Apple’s involvement was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement last year, saying that the companies used news articles to train their models without permission.)
While Google, Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI have been at the forefront of AI development for years, Apple has lagged. It recently announced that it would soon allow customers to use OpenAI’s chatbot on the iPhone.
In June, Apple unveiled its plan to add generative AI to devices. The technology, which it calls Apple Intelligence, will improve its Siri virtual assistant, automatically prioritize messages and offer writing tools that proofread or suggest sentences for e-mails, notes or text.
The company is expected to provide more details on the technology Sept. 9 when it hosts an event to unveil its newest iPhones at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.